Monday, February 20, 2012

On Feb. 20, 1992, more American homes tuned into The Simpsons than they did The Cosby Show or the Winter Olympics from Albertville, France. A foul-mouthed cartoon on a fourth-place network bested the Huxtables and the world’s best amateur athletes. Fox over NBC and CBS—its first-ever victory in prime time. New over old.

And how were the players who were on the show:

Showrunner Al Jean has said the players who committed were more than happy to do the show. Well, almost of all of them. “They were all really nice,” Jean said on the DVD commentary, “except for one whose name rhymes with Manseco.”

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You guys know there's an academic article on the likelihood of a zombie apocalypse, right?

That was actually kind of an interesting paper. Although the approach they used was very simple minded, they found that none of their simple models yielded a stable disease-free equilibrium. That means that once the infection gets to the point where you can't feasibly kill every existing zombie, you're screwed.

Interestingly, the Feed scenario does yield a stable equilibrium. With very effective quarantining and very large zombie kill rates near settled regions, the basic reproduction rate is less than one, while less effective screening and smaller kill rates (which you might get away from settled areas) yields a basic reproduction rate greater than one. So you could survive by banding into groups, keeping the large mass of zombies at bay, and being very vigilant about killing any zombies or infected in your midst.

That was actually kind of an interesting paper. Although the approach they used was very simple minded, they found that none of their simple models yielded a stable disease-free equilibrium. That means that once the infection gets to the point where you can't feasibly kill every existing zombie, you're screwed.

Given zombies primative means of locomotion, couldn't you wall off a relatively large penisula with some chain link fence, and be safe? Or just move to a bridge less island?

i'm not really familiar with the walking dead canon, but what if the outbreak was related to vaccinations? if the whole zombie thing was started because of a contaminated flu vaccine, that could explain how there came to be so many zombies in such a short time.

and if the army vaccinated their soldiers, that could explain how the military disintegrated.

just a thought there.

As far as a possible zombie outbreak that is possible but for TWD we know that didn't happen.

While it's true that well armed and trained cops and soldiers COULD easily mow down entire hordes of zombies before the world was overrun with them, it's also true that they WOULDN'T, at least not until the level of carnage and chaos had reached truly horrific proportions. Remember, in a world that hasn't heard of zombies, no one is going to view them as the soulless horror movie monsters that we do. They'd be seen as sick/crazy people, and the police and military would be just as reluctant to start gunning them down as they would with an angry and aggressive mob during a riot. And many of the non infected civilians who actually did start killing them early on would likely be arrested for murder themselves. How soon would hospitals and jails fill up if everyone infected was hospitalized or jailed and the "normals" who started shooting them were jailed pending trial as well? What happens then?

And has anyone even mentioned the anti-police/military protests/riots that would ensue when the powers that be started rounding up "sick" people and packing them in jails or quarantining them in hospitals like prisoners? Cries of police brutality and all that jazz.

Might be funny to see a "zombie" on trial for biting someone though while their family-hired lawyer fights the assault charge with an insanity defense.

Given zombies primative means of locomotion, couldn't you wall off a relatively large penisula with some chain link fence, and be safe? Or just move to a bridge less island?

The thing is the Earth is a gigantic place. Presently there is about 85 people per sq mile in America with metropolitan places being much more heavily populated. In most places in America the zombie horde would be something like 5 or 6 zombies shambling around. Places like Iowa, Indiana, Wyoming, the Dakotas and such would either be so sparsely populated and/or so inhospitable to zombies that zombies wouldn't be much of a concern in those regions.

My point is that they ran and had the least amount of experience dealing with zombies yet they figured out very quickly how to kill them and how to deal with them. Yet organized and well trained forces fighting them and interacting with them constantly could not learn any of the stuff some scared citizen picks up after 20 minutes of interaction with zombies.

Maybe the police and military weren't allowed to pursue the optimal strategy (i.e. running away), since they were being paid not to do that.

The armed forces has jets, tanks, helicopters, ships, communcation networks, training on how to work together, and vast amount of resources.

So is the army going to just blow up everything that moves, then, and sort 'em out later? Or are we going to have F-22 pilots try and pick out individual targets on the ground as they buzz past at Mach 1? I mean, if I'm trying to deliver precision strikes on dispersed ground targets, I could hardly do better than to have USS Halsey drop anchor off the coast, turn its guns toward the shore and start shelling individual walkers. That'd be super.

But we have heard of zombies. Yes, during the initial outbreak human beings would be reluctant to kill zombies but they are not hard to capture. Remember the barn is full of walkers that common citizens simply corraled and put in the barn.

And has anyone even mentioned the anti-police/military protests/riots that would ensue when the powers that be started rounding up "sick" people and packing them in jails or quarantining them in hospitals like prisoners? Cries of police brutality and all that jazz.

Might be funny to see a "zombie" on trial for biting someone though while their family-hired lawyer fights the assault charge with an insanity defense.

Stuff like this might happen during the beginning of the outbreak but if the outbreak isn't contained we will move past this kind of stuff and it isn't going to take 3 billion zombies roaming the planet to get us there. America will not do nothing while millions upon millions of Americans are zombies.

Even if we don't come to grips with these things being mindless zombies we will mobilize enough to declare martial law and call in the national guard and military. If NYC has 10,000 zombies roaming around it they are going to declare martial law. Hell, if NYC had 10,000 rioters they would call martial law so I don't see how they would just ignore 10,000 roaming zombies that are attacking human beings and seem to be impervious to bullets.

Maybe the police and military weren't allowed to pursue the optimal strategy (i.e. running away), since they were being paid not to do that.

So what? That means they don't learn how to kill a zombie?

So is the army going to just blow up everything that moves, then, and sort 'em out later? Or are we going to have F-22 pilots try and pick out individual targets on the ground as they buzz past at Mach 1? I mean, if I'm trying to deliver precision strikes on dispersed ground targets, I could hardly do better than to have USS Halsey drop anchor off the coast, turn its guns toward the shore and start shelling individual walkers. That'd be super.

So again, are we talking about a handful of zombies or millions of them? If it is only handful of zombies then they don't need to call in a carpet bombing raid. They can send in the troops, armored vehicles, and helicopters. If you got yourself a horder of hundreds or thousands you can obliterate them from the air, sea, or miles away on the ground.

Let me just also add that it would be extremely easy to immobolize zombies. Torso shots and such are not really ineffective. It takes a lot of muscles and bones working in coordination to keep a human being upright and mobile. Start damaging abdomen and upper body muscles along with bones and a zombie isn't standing upright for long. Damage shoulder, chest, and arm muscles along with bones and a zombie won't be dragging themselves far or using their limbs for long. A good break of any bone from the shin and up on a leg to torso and a zombie isn't walking. Break both ankles and a zombie isn't walking. Fire may not kill a zombie or kill a zombie right away but it will destroy the tissue and muscles which will render a zombie immobile.

But the people of The Walking Dead don't. We can tell this because when Rick sees his first zombie, he doesn't say, "Oh my God, it's a zombie!" Nobody ever says, "This is just like that movie, 'Night of the Living Dead.'" Etc.

Stuff like this might happen during the beginning of the outbreak...

And then once we're past the "beginning" of the outbreak, there will be far too many zombies for a simple search-and-destroy to be the cakewalk you're portraying it as being.

If NYC has 10,000 zombies roaming around it they are going to declare martial law. Hell, if NYC had 10,000 rioters they would call martial law so I don't see how they would just ignore 10,000 roaming zombies that are attacking human beings and seem to be impervious to bullets.

And then all of those National Guardsmen get bit and converted while trying to restrain what they think are rioters.

So what? That means they don't learn how to kill a zombie?

That means that they have to learn how to kill a zombie the hard way - by trying different things and seeing what works. During which process a lot of cops/soldiers are going to be infected themselves.

If it is only handful of zombies then they don't need to call in a carpet bombing raid. They can send in the troops, armored vehicles, and helicopters.

If it's only a handful of zombies, people aren't going to understand what "zombies" are, and soldiers probably won't be allowed to shoot them, for reasons that have already been repeated ad nauseum.

If you got yourself a horder of hundreds or thousands you can obliterate them from the air, sea, or miles away on the ground.

If you do that, you'll kill a lot of zombies, but you'll also destroy a lot of infrastructure - power stations, dams, fuel dumps, stuff like that, which will make it significantly harder to maintain order and civilization in nearby areas. And at some point, you need to start worrying about how you're going to keep your planes full of bombs and in the air...

Let me just also add that it would be extremely easy to immobolize zombies. Torso shots and such are not really ineffective. It takes a lot of muscles and bones working in coordination to keep a human being upright and mobile. Start damaging abdomen and upper body muscles along with bones and a zombie isn't standing upright for long. Damage shoulder, chest, and arm muscles along with bones and a zombie won't be dragging themselves far or using their limbs for long. A good break of any bone from the shin and up on a leg to torso and a zombie isn't walking. Break both ankles and a zombie isn't walking.

How much ammo are you carrying, that you can afford to squander it in such grand style?

i'm not really familiar with the walking dead canon, but what if the outbreak was related to vaccinations? if the whole zombie thing was started because of a contaminated flu vaccine, that could explain how there came to be so many zombies in such a short time.

and if the army vaccinated their soldiers, that could explain how the military disintegrated.

just a thought there.

Yup, this is just the kind of thing you need to get the outbreak spreading very very quickly, to the point that everything goes to hell before the fight against zombies gets organized. I'm going to guess you haven't spent weeks coming up with this, which goes to my mild disappointment with the makers of zombie fiction who can't come up with a credible outbreak scenario. Everything depends on getting it right, which made the rage virus in the 28 Days films unusual--it was credible, mass, immediate chaos would follow, and the survivors wouldn't be all that far from extinction, at least in the nation of origin.

What the titanic Vlad-McCoy slugfest tells us is that a well thought out zombie pandemic should start fast and spread even faster. My vote is that there are plenty of outbreak scenarios that could leave us in a Walking Dead universe as of the second episode of its first season, but the outbreak scenario given us in The Walking Dead isn't one of them.

Still and all, I'm enjoying the series enormously. I think too we're on the verge of a showdown as of episode 9 in season 2

SPOILERSPOILERSPOILER

it won't work to keep prolonging the tension between Rick and Shane. The writers have been turning up the heat, and the simmer is turning into a fast boil. There's no way it will work dramatically to not have one of them leave the series, probably in a box. I figure too that Andrea's "I've made my peace" means she'll be staying with the group, even if Shane leaves on his feet, but I haven't figured out what the catalyst will be to get the group off the farm. That's going to have to happen if for no other reason than to keep the series interesting. Does the opposing group, and the zombies drawn by incessant gunfire, destroy the farm? Burn most of the buildings and slaughter most of the domestic animals, and there's not much point in staying, especially if it's become the county's de facto zombie relocation center.

My guess is that in episode 10 or 11 Shane and Rick have a High Noon kind of showdown, and Shane is killed. That works better for me than if he packs up and goes and we're continually wondering when and how he'll reappear. He believes the baby is his, so if he leaves he'll stay within range of the group. He's not the kind of guy who'll disappear and stay gone.

But the people of The Walking Dead don't. We can tell this because when Rick sees his first zombie, he doesn't say, "Oh my God, it's a zombie!" Nobody ever says, "This is just like that movie, 'Night of the Living Dead.'" Etc.

And we're talking about what would happen if a zombie outbreak happened in the real world not an alternate universe.

And then once we're past the "beginning" of the outbreak, there will be far too many zombies for a simple search-and-destroy to be the cakewalk you're portraying it as being.

Why would there be too many? Are we going to go from a couple of thousand to a 100 million zombies in a day? If the infection is going to happen that rapidly the "beginning" phase is go to last about an hour before the guns get broken out.

And then all of those National Guardsmen get bit and converted while trying to restrain what they think are rioters.

Why would they think they are rioters? But even if they do get bit they don't instanteously get turned into a zombie.

That means that they have to learn how to kill a zombie the hard way - by trying different things and seeing what works. During which process a lot of cops/soldiers are going to be infected themselves.

Communication networks are still up and they are still well trained. The hard way means they fire at a zombie. He keeps coming. They empty their clip into a zombie. It starts wobbling around a bit. They take 4 steps back and reload. They unload their clip into it again and one of the rounds hits the zombie in the head and drops it. They shout "Eureka" and get on the radio and the information is disseminated. This trial and error isn't going to last months it is going to last minutes. These cops/soldiers that are learning are not dealing with swarms of millions of zombies they are dealing with one or two zombies at that point in time.

If it's only a handful of zombies, people aren't going to understand what "zombies" are, and soldiers probably won't be allowed to shoot them, for reasons that have already been repeated ad nauseum.

And you somehow think that this small handful will turn into 300 million zombies within 5 minutes. If you have only a handful of zombies then you don't have a problem yet and like I said earlier it isn't hard to corral zombies. Even if they don't shoot them they will be able to round them up without getting infected. People tend to try to avoid getting bit by anything and I doubt they'll change that approach with a zombie whether they know it is a zombie or not. Will some of the people trying to round them up get bit? Yes. But it isn't going 1,000 zombies and then an hour later 300 million zombies.

If you do that, you'll kill a lot of zombies, but you'll also destroy a lot of infrastructure - power stations, dams, fuel dumps, stuff like that, which will make it significantly harder to maintain order and civilization in nearby areas. And at some point, you need to start worrying about how you're going to keep your planes full of bombs and in the air...

For some reason you think human beings are the mindless beings instead of the zombies. I'm not sure why you think human beings are incapable of learning, planning, and strategizing.

How much ammo are you carrying, that you can afford to squander it in such grand style?

It doesn't actually take a lot of ammo seriously hinder a zombie and one thing I've noticed while looking through history is that seldom does an army run out of bullets.

I think that is part of the problem. In a real world scenario I'm not viewing zombies as these magical creatures that defy all that is known about organisms. I'm treating zombies as a viral infection that does X thus things like rotting, the heat, the cold, the military, human intelligence, and such are going to be big factors against zombies.

I linked earlier to a fungus that is known to animate "zombie" ants, that is what I would think this would be an organism that overrides the non-autonomous aspect of the brain and takes over control of the body, using it to do it's bidding. Not in a puppet master way, but in an evolutionary way, in which it needs the body to acquire sustenance and to travel so that it can procreate. As long as the brain is functioning it should continue to exist, and even if the brain dies, the organism itself is still alive.

cfb, this thread, the film Autumn, and your link have gotten me thinking. I'm going to spend an hour this coming week sketching out a scenario where zombies evolve, from slow-twitch automatons into something... else. Perhaps something more evolved than humans. See if the genre can take to that kind of different direction.

SPOILERSPOILERSPOILER

Btw, was anyone else as impressed as I was with episode 9, Triggerfinger? Lori's whispering in Rick's ear at the finish, priming him to murder Shane, was remarkable, a daring turn in the script, and quite literally a shock. I've been hoping the series wasn't going to settle in to Star Trek like arrangement where the main cast is untouchable, and only the away team redshirts were at risk. Killing off your most interesting character with no replacement in sight is a nervy move, but I think they need to do it.

Canada has a population density of 9 per square mile and have a climate and terrain that would be very inhospitable to zombies. The US is at 83 per square mile. Don't know what it would be if we exclude the 1 per square mile that Alaska contributes. Mexico is at 148 per square mile but the climate and terrain would be inhospitable to zombies. So it is quite possible that Mexico has its population wiped out by zombies and then has those zombies perish because of environmental reasons.

cfb, this thread, the film Autumn, and your link have gotten me thinking. I'm going to spend an hour this coming week sketching out a scenario where zombies evolve, from slow-twitch automatons into something... else. Perhaps something more evolved than humans. See if the genre can take to that kind of different direction.

the comment about the vaccine also made me think, let's say there is a contaminated vaccine with whatever is that causes zombies(super zombie fungus), and lets also say that the initial outbreak through the vaccine has a 2 week or longer incubation period, and in some cases that period could be as long as years, but that when the outbreak is transmitted by bite, the incubation period is in the hours or quicker, and that some instances it can even be transmitted by air, say the distance of a cough, now I wonder how this might make a difference in McCoy's scenario.

Not even close. Benton County Indiana is the least densely populated county in the state with 22 people per square mile. Overall, the state is 16th in population density at 182/square mile.

And within Benton County are townships and such which are sparsely populated. For instance Union Township has a population density of 7.8 per square mile. Gilboa is at 6.7. Parish Grove Township is at 5.9.

I have, but only in the fifteen collected volumes, and not always in order. It depended on what my friend had lying around. There are different imperatives at work in a tv show, though, and the series has been a huge success for AMC. Departing from the recurring cast idea would be a huge risk. Let's say the series follows the comic book model by killing off a significant character every week or two, and by the third week of season three Lori, the new baby, Daryl, Carol, Shane, and Andrea are toast. I could see ratings go into the toilet. Just killing off Shane and, say, one other significant character would be a very big deal as these things go. According to tv land logic surely at least Rick, Carl, Glen, Daryl, Andrea, A Second Woman, and the token person of color (at least until Michonne turns up), whatshisname, are immune to slaughter. Hmm--I suppose that suggests you could kill off Lori, Shane, Dale, Carol, and Hershel and keep going from there.

Once you get west of Des Moines, it's pretty open country until you hit Omaha. Once you pass Omaha if you keep going west on I-80, it would be a zombie desert.

Yeah--a lot of Iowa farms are already fenced for livestock, have generators since power outages aren't rare, and have working wells and septic systmes. Midwest farm country is going to do very nicely in the zombie apocalypse. Most of the trouble won't come from zombies but rather from folks from Des Moines, Ames, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City overwhelming existing small farms. Imagine you, your spouse and three children hunkered down nicely outside of Carroll, Iowa on your family farm. That is, until a ragtag band of a dozen refugees from the cities show up in your driveway.

the comment about the vaccine also made me think, let's say there is a contaminated vaccine with whatever is that causes zombies(super zombie fungus), and lets also say that the initial outbreak through the vaccine has a 2 week or longer incubation period, and in some cases that period could be as long as years, but that when the outbreak is transmitted by bite, the incubation period is in the hours or quicker, and that some instances it can even be transmitted by air, say the distance of a cough, now I wonder how this might make a difference in McCoy's scenario.

Something like this would nail it, to the point of removing objections about the start and spread rate being insufficient to overwhelm a highly organized, heavily armed society. Particularly by making the armed forces the source, and making the illness the vaccine induces transmissable through the air.

Goodbye, civilization. Well, at least in the country of origin. Perhaps part of the two week incubation period is increasing aggression to the point where the military, in all the countries where the US has bases, starts shooting wars, and throws a few nuclear missile launches into the equation before all the injected and infected go full zombie.

That's a very different scenario from the typical ones where the infected go for a nice lie down before rampaging. I like the idea that part of the infection process would be going crazy with aggression while not losing all of your reasoning abilities.

Increased aggression within the armed forces, particularly if those in charge still came across as rational beings--how would that even be particularly detectable before all hell broke loose? There's some juicy sociopolitical commentary in there was well.

Imagine that scenario, with one other addition. The incubation period is still several weeks for the vaccine, but within a week after getting the vaccine the cough/airborne version of it becomes available and has several hours of incubation. Now you have people getting the vaccine infecting people, panic about the infection drives millions more to get vaccines in hopes of stopping them from getting the disease.

1) For some reason, vaccine testing failed to reveal the problems. That needs accounting for. (If I write this it's exactly the kind of thing I'll take care of because it's exactly the kind of thing that impinges on the fun if it's not addressed. I can see it now-- snapper: "Oh, come on. There's no way they'd administer a dangerous vaccine to a million troops.")

2) So let's say that one result of the GOP winning the house, the senate, and the presidency in 2012 is that the FDA is gutted, and testing of the vaccine was minimal. Further, President Santorum carpetbombed Teheran in 2014 in order to prevent the Iranian acquisition of a nuclear weapon. Widespread, worldwide protests erupt, putting the US military on high alert. Numerous attacks on US military bases and personnel in protest of the bombing ensue. The US responds vigorously. Vaccine induced aggression in the military is masked by its already aggressive posture. Not sure how a vaccine would induce illness that would be transmitted through the air, though (can any of our resident biologists help us out here?).

3) The airborne virus is transmitted to civilian personnel who come into contact with US military personnel both in the states, and abroad. The symptoms include irritability, aggression, speedy escalation of conflict, but also flulike symptoms including fever and bleeding. A rumor spreads via the internet that the virus is a government creation, and that's why the military got the vaccine first. That would explain the general populations' demand to get the vaccine also, inadvertantly spreading the vaccine-induced virus...

--okay, the problem with that is, why aren't those symptoms appearing first in military personnel, meaning that the supposed vaccine isn't working? How do we get around that? Is it possible that the part of the virus transmitted through the air induces symptoms more rapidly than that portion of the virus gestating in the bloodstream because of the vaccine? I wouldn't think so--how could a virus have two very different components like that?

Btw, The Colony, a Discovery channel series, is an interesting look at a dozen people dealing with postApocalyptic Los Angeles. It tries to be very realistic, and does a good job of that. The lack of firearms is the only unrealistic part of the scenario. This is the US. The first thing we'd do is head to the local gunstore and loot a bunch of AK-47s.

And we're talking about what would happen if a zombie outbreak happened in the real world not an alternate universe.

No, we're talking about the universe of The Walking Dead. Because if we were talking about a real world zombie outbreak in our world, we would've needed to be much more rigorous in defining the nature of zombies, given the huge variation from fictional universe to fictional universe.

Why would there be too many?

Because the zombies would have converted a large number of people by then.

Are we going to go from a couple of thousand to a 100 million zombies in a day?

No, not that quickly.

Why would they think they are rioters? But even if they do get bit they don't instanteously get turned into a zombie.

The guardsmen would think the zombies are rioters because the mission you described calls for riot control, and in the universe we're discussing people don't know what zombies are, and will try to conceptualize them as something that's more familiar.

The hard way means they fire at a zombie. He keeps coming. They empty their clip into a zombie. It starts wobbling around a bit. They take 4 steps back and reload. They unload their clip into it again and one of the rounds hits the zombie in the head and drops it.

Why is the guardsman shooting what appears to be, to him, an unarmed civilian with serious injuries, rather than acting the way an actual guardsman would in that situation?

Just as another illustration of the extent to which you're assuming the guardsmen will have knowledge of facts not in evidence: If we've skipped ahead to the point where the few surviving guardsmen understand that zombies are animated corpses rather than living beings, why are they so sure that the zombie that just got shot in the head will continue to stay dead? After all, it didn't stay dead the last time someone killed it, did it? It rose from the grave.

These cops/soldiers that are learning are not dealing with swarms of millions of zombies they are dealing with one or two zombies at that point in time.

If there are only one or two zombies in a given area at that point in time, then there's no way that soldiers would have been called in to defend the populace against them. People would still be getting eaten and converted in out-of-the-way spots.

And you somehow think that this small handful will turn into 300 million zombies within 5 minutes.

No, I don't. But I do think that the mortality rate from initial zombie encounters is going to be extremely high, since people don't know what they are, and will continue to be so for a significant amount of time, due to the inherent implausibility of the "truth".

People tend to try to avoid getting bit by anything and I doubt they'll change that approach with a zombie whether they know it is a zombie or not.

Why, in your scenario, are they expecting to be bitten, and to defend primarily against bite attacks? That's not how people would normally act around an armed authority figure. If they attacked at all, they'd punch or grapple or try to strike with a hand-to-hand weapon of opportunity.

I'm not sure why you think human beings are incapable of learning, planning, and strategizing.

I don't think that they're incapable of it, just that it's much harder than you seem to appreciate. Learning about zombies is going to involve in a huge percentage of the initial wave of people encountering zombies being bitten and/or killed. And the second wave. And the third wave. You won't see widespread knowledge of what zombies are and how they "work" until you acquire a sufficiently large number of people who survived zombie encounters for a story of a zombie encounter to be treated with any degree of seriousness.

Meanwhile, people's ability to plan and strategize is going to be seriously compromised by a lack of solid intel, as described above. CentCom won't be able to formulate a realistic strategy until the nature of zombies becomes known, and by that point, there are going to be a hell of a lot of them.

It doesn't actually take a lot of ammo seriously hinder a zombie...

Shots that don't go into the brain are more-or-less wasted. A field full of armless zombies or crawling zombies is still a significant threat, just like a field full of rattlesnakes. If they can bite, they can still kill you.

one thing I've noticed while looking through history is that seldom does an army run out of bullets.

Seldom does an army face an enemy that can't be killed by anything other than headshots, or an enemy that can turn its own troops against it with one bite.

okay, the problem with that is, why aren't those symptoms appearing first in military personnel, meaning that the supposed vaccine isn't working? How do we get around that? Is it possible that the part of the virus transmitted through the air induces symptoms more rapidly than that portion of the virus gestating in the bloodstream because of the vaccine? I wouldn't think so--how could a virus have two very different components like that?

In the sequel to Empire, by Orson Scott Card, he introduced a virus that was originally caught by a monkey bite, which didn't kill the victim, but the actual plaque that managed to wipe out a significant portion of the Earth took a different route, didn't look at all like the original disease and was transmitted differently(airborne). I got the impression he researched how that would work.

Mind you the way I was describing it, it isn't really a virus, it's contaminated with an undetected life form/fungus which would have it's own rules. Of course it's probable that any good microscope would pick up the spores even with a cursory examination. I wonder how few cells a spore could be and still retain it's identity?

No, we're talking about the universe of The Walking Dead. Because if we were talking about a real world zombie outbreak in our world, we would've needed to be much more rigorous in defining the nature of zombies, given the huge variation from fictional universe to fictional universe.

As far as I can tell nobody was talking about an alternate universe where nobody knows about zombies.

Because the zombies would have converted a large number of people by then.

How many is a large number and how quickly?

No, not that quickly.

So then how quickly?

The guardsmen would think the zombies are rioters because the mission you described calls for riot control, and in the universe we're discussing people don't know what zombies are, and will try to conceptualize them as something that's more familiar.

I didn't describe any kind of mission. I said that a city with 10,000 rioters would have martial law declared thus if you have 10,000 people acting like zombies you would also have martial law declared. But just because martial law is declared doesn't mean human beings are incapable of telling the difference between looters and zombies.

Why is the guardsman shooting what appears to be, to him, an unarmed civilian with serious injuries, rather than acting the way an actual guardsman would in that situation?

Why do you think that every single first encounter with a zombie will result in the instanteous death of all the people that come into contact with the zombie? Peopel are capable of learning and I'm not sure why you think things won't escalate. I'll ask again. Do you think the zombie population is going to go from 1 to 300 million in a day?

Just as another illustration of the extent to which you're assuming the guardsmen will have knowledge of facts not in evidence: If we've skipped ahead to the point where the few surviving guardsmen understand that zombies are animated corpses rather than living beings, why are they so sure that the zombie that just got shot in the head will continue to stay dead? After all, it didn't stay dead the last time someone killed it, did it? It rose from the grave.

Huh? Nobody killed a zombie only to have it rise from the dead. Human beings died and then they turned into a zombie. Then at some point people decided to use lethal force against them. They would notice that a shot to the chest appears to have no effect against them. Eventually through either luck or trial and error someone would seriously damage the head of a zombie and that zombie would stop moving. Why do you think people would be so dumb as to not notice this or for some reason think the zombie is just tricking them for days on end?

If there are only one or two zombies in a given area at that point in time, then there's no way that soldiers would have been called in to defend the populace against them. People would still be getting eaten and converted in out-of-the-way spots.

So you are just going to ignore the word "cop" in my sentence?

No, I don't. But I do think that the mortality rate from initial zombie encounters is going to be extremely high, since people don't know what they are, and will continue to be so for a significant amount of time, due to the inherent implausibility of the "truth".

People dying is not inherently implausible. People throughout history have taken notice of death. We tend not to like it.

Why, in your scenario, are they expecting to be bitten, and to defend primarily against bite attacks? That's not how people would normally act around an armed authority figure. If they attacked at all, they'd punch or grapple or try to strike with a hand-to-hand weapon of opportunity.

Unarmed foe who constantly tries to grab you and bite you. It isn't going to take long for anyone on this planet to figure out that it is trying to bite you. Will some people initially get bit? Of course but human beings are capable of changing tactics and learning new things.

You won't see widespread knowledge of what zombies are and how they "work" until you acquire a sufficiently large number of people who survived zombie encounters for a story of a zombie encounter to be treated with any degree of seriousness.

Zombies are not deadly raptors. They are mindless bags of flesh. Unless the zombie populations starts off in the hundreds of millions the initial attacks are going to be few and far between. Plenty of people will have experienced a zombie attack and survived. Yes some of them will get bit and eventually die and turn but that will also be a learning experience. You'll also have a ton of witnesses watching all of this and talking about it. You'll also well organized intelligence gathering agencies pondering over this stuff. You also have a very advanced communication network that can and will get the information out there. Your view seems to be that people will not understand what a zombie is thus every single person who even happens to look up a zombie in that first week or so will fall victim to that zombie and turn. I'm not buying that.

Shots that don't go into the brain are more-or-less wasted.

As stated earlier, no they are not.

A field full of armless zombies or crawling zombies is still a significant threat, just like a field full of rattlesnakes. If they can bite, they can still kill you.

Do you have a fetish for picnicing in a field full of armless legless zombies?

Seldom does an army face an enemy that can't be killed by anything other than headshots, or an enemy that can turn its own troops against it with one bite.

Mind you the way I was describing it, it isn't really a virus, it's contaminated with an undetected life form/fungus which would have it's own rules. Of course it's probable that any good microscope would pick up the spores even with a cursory examination. I wonder how few cells a spore could be and still retain it's identity?

I don't know about that last but it's worth looking into.

Also, good point about the fungus. Perhaps the fungus spreads contemporaneous with the virus, is mistaken for something the virus protects against, and we're off to the races.

And within Benton County are townships and such which are sparsely populated. For instance Union Township has a population density of 7.8 per square mile. Gilboa is at 6.7. Parish Grove Township is at 5.9.

You'd be hard-pressed to find any location within any state, other than perhaps Rhode Island, that didn't have small sections (farmland, in our case) with very few people. Indiana doesn't belong on any list of low-population density states, as you originally said, nor is there anything remotely resembling "huge parts of Indiana that probably have something like 1 person per square mile." You were just wrong, twice.

We have the smarts on here to come up with a plausible theory on how to create a real zombie in our universe. Lets get to cracking. (I wonder if the spy software the government uses to spy on the internet can translate into knowing I'm talking strictly in a literature sense or movie sense.)

On the current earth we have a zombie fungus, that can turn ants into zombies, basically controlling their brains into moving to another location and dying so that it can travel to an optimum spot to survive. Now if we amp it up through selective breeding in a lab or however, would it be possible that this fungus can evolve to the point that it uses the ant/host more than just mere locomotion? could it evolve to the point that it could control the limbs and mouth to try and feast on better substance so it can grow stronger? And if it did, wouldn't it be arguable that since it lives inside the "brain" of the ant, that it's preferred subsistence would be brains? And of course through a fluke of evolution, this fungus grows to the point that now it works it's abilities on humans? Is that really that far fetched? (yes it's far fetched, but is really far fetched?)

We've identify how zombie's can exist, now we have to identify how they would infect a major portion of the world? Obviously the scenario that we've created is the pretty close to an optimal scenario. An infected(which is the hard part of the story to explain) vaccine shot is given, and to of course make the story even a bigger deal, it's in one of those years where the public is panicking because of some hybrid bearmanpig flu going around so the vaccine is given at a lot higher percentage than it would normally. (mind you the infection would have to happen to the first stage of producing the vaccine. Don't know anything about vaccine production but I'll just assume for the sake of a story that vaccines are copied/replicated from the first successful batch) So millions of people are given the vaccine, mostly in industrialized worlds since they can afford the vaccine. The fungus moves up into the brain and multiply, to the point that there is starting to be an excess fungus. Now of course flu vaccines generally give a percentage of the people who receive it a mild case of the flu, so they will have the sniffles, and cough. These people have the full version of the fungus in the bodies. When they cough or sneeze, the fungus enters the next person as a more virulent strain for some reason(need to explain why, perhaps the vaccine helped slow it's growth, without the vaccine it's supercharged?) Now these people get the "flu" and within hours or at most a couple of days are ravenous hordes--the time frame has to be long enough that it makes it difficult to find the cause-- at first a few isolated cases happen, and this of course sends a panic to the populace who insists on the vaccine, since vaccinated people have stayed healthy, but non-vaccinated people around the zombies become infected(airborne still) So millions more, including the military(if they weren't vaccinated first) are now vaccinated. Unfortunately they aren't able to make enough vaccines for everyone at a fast enough clip so the rich and powerful, the haves all get the vaccines while the poor of course are told to stay in their homes until the supply can catch up to the demand. About a month after the first vaccine, there have been a few hundred zombie outbreaks, but then it starts to get bad as the vaccinated start to turn on their family and loved ones. Millions upon Millions of healthy individuals, with a large portion being the important people for society all turn into zombies. Two months after the first vaccination, 90% of the vaccinated have turned into zombies, over 50 million people in the united states or more.(looking it up on wiki--we have the capability world wide to vaccinate 826 million vaccines could be produced in a normal year, in a pandemic situation 2.8billion in a six month time frame)

I'm not sure if we really need to add the component of getting more violent or not. It could be a nice symptom, not sure it's necessary though.

McCoy's overly literal arguments about Star Wars and such are a guilty pleasure of mine. I will enjoy this thread.

A kid named Skywalker living with Anakin's stepbrother and came to the family right around the time that Padme would have had a kid and some hermit named Kenobi is hanging around? Pure coincidence I tell you!

According to the stats that I could find about 30% of Americans get a flu shot each year.

For the most part a vaccination zombie outbreak would be less of a threat than a lot of other kinds of zombie outbreaks since the vast majority of humans that kid vaccinated are little children that will live for year and years. I guess you could come up with a scenario where some new infection hits humans that forces a ton of people to rush out and vaccinate themselves to this new plague.

So the likeliest outbreak would come from a flu shot but it isn't like everybody in America gets a flu shot on the same day.

According to the stats that I could find about 30% of Americans get a flu shot each year.

I was wondering how many got it (was it last year or the year before?) anyway, 30% would be enough to make this a nightmare scenario. That is still close to 100 million. 1/3 of the population turning would be bad. Of course to make it even more jarring is having the vaccine only having a 50% infection rate, so you never know if you are a person waiting to become a zombie or if you are one of the immune.

Only problem I have with my scenario, is that the true horror of zombies, family members attacking their own family, may not be as realistic because every member in the family would probably have been vaccinated. So it's more of a neighbors versus neighbors story. Of course a story point could be a family with a kid to young(under 2) who got the family vaccinated starts to turn, and the mom realizing she is going to turn eventually and has after they figure out the vaccine is the cause, is now running away from her husband and older kids in a last desperate attempt to get the baby to someone she knows who hasn't been vaccinated and to convince them to take her baby as she starts to turn.

So the likeliest outbreak would come from a flu shot but it isn't like everybody in America gets a flu shot on the same day.

The scenario that I am proposing has a several week incubation time period, maybe even a month, happening in one of those years in which the public is terrorized by the media into getting a vaccine. And then compounding it, with an outbreak of zombies among people who haven't been vaccinated, creating a panic for more vaccine shots.

I was wondering how many got it (was it last year or the year before?) anyway, 30% would be enough to make this a nightmare scenario. That is still close to 100 million. 1/3 of the population turning would be bad. Of course to make it even more jarring is having the vaccine only having a 50% infection rate, so you never know if you are a person waiting to become a zombie or if you are one of the immune.

I touched on it a bit in my edit but it wouldn't really be that 100 million people get the infection and even if the infection stays dormant for months it isn't like they would all turn zombie at once. If for instance you turn into a zombie two weeks after inoculation then I would say something like 20 to 30 million Americans would be infected and have the potential to turn into zombies.

I've read a bit about World War Z and since I've got a Barnes & Noble credit card I might pick it up but from what I've read about it I don't think it is proof that a zombie outbreak could happen in today's world. Rather it shows what needs to happen in today's world in order for something like a zombie outbreak to happen.

what if there was an environmental trigger that caused the vaccine to go bad all at once?

We would have to simplify the origin then, because there are already too many spinning plates before it starts to break the suspension of disbelief.

Basically that type of scenario would be something basic, a vaccine with a contamination has been given and lies dormant until an environmental trigger, which then causes it to hasten the mutation into zombies. I'm just not sure it would jive with the real world aspect of the fungus which actually exists. In this scenario we would probably need to find a reason for the fungus to be dormant, or come up with an entirely different real world reason for zombie creation. I guess it's arguable that there are fungus which lay dormant until a set condition arrives for them activate.

Of course what type of environmental trigger could activate something dormant worldwide? Sunspot maybe? Possibly a major volcano erupting and creating multiple days of no sunlight(not sudden enough though, and artificial lighting probably eliminates that as a real issue) Basically only way to get a world wide event would be something extra terrestrial as the trigger.

People turning into zombies is so far fetched that the scenario needed for it to happen would probably be a billion to one type scenario. So the reality is that something that sounds really far fetched and would never happen in a million years is probably pretty close to the scenario that would most likely be needed to trigger zombies.

A kid named Skywalker living with Anakin's stepbrother and came to the family right around the time that Padme would have had a kid and some hermit named Kenobi is hanging around? Pure coincidence I tell you!

I find it interesting that Owen and Lars don't particularly see Luke as their own child and Luke isn't broken up either....probably because he is now the owner of a kickass sandcrawler.

Of course what type of environmental trigger could activate something dormant worldwide? Sunspot maybe? Possibly a major volcano erupting and creating multiple days of no sunlight(not sudden enough though, and artificial lighting probably eliminates that as a real issue) Basically only way to get a world wide event would be something extra terrestrial as the trigger.

genetically modified corn.

cancer usually requires 2 mutations. 1 mutation causes the cells to grow uncontrollably, and a 2nd prevents them from killing themselves. the combination of the two mutations leads to uncontrollable cellular reproduction.

so, in this case, 1 mutation would be the contaminated flu vaccine, and the 2nd would be a buildup of some wildcard variable that was introduced to the population in the form of genetically modified vegetation.

As far as food is concerned we have none. They decide yummy trans fat must go, and next thing we know KFC now tastes like ####. They decide that corn will have subsidies and all the sudden all the sodas are pale imitations of what they used to be as they go from Sugar to corn.(and it's funny I don't like the throwbacks, my taste buds has shifted) Heck I still want to find out what happen to my Tuna Twist!!!!

Of course with genetic modification, you have the theory of more seasonal fruits and vegetables at a lower cost, but as business have found out, just like with baseball tickets, is you don't have to drop the price if you are going to have a steady demand that meets your goals.

Of course with genetic modification, you have the theory of more seasonal fruits and vegetables at a lower cost, but as business have found out, just like with baseball tickets, is you don't have to drop the price if you are going to have a steady demand that meets your goals.

Well, the commodity price of an orange in January of 1982 was $315.20 per ton and the price in January of 2012 was $731. According to inflation calculators $315.20 in 1982 is equivalent to $740 today. So oranges have dropped in price by $9 despite the fact that costs have gone up to produce oranges and so has demand.

Corn cost $113.38 January of 1982 and cost $272.85 last month. Adjusted for inflation the 1982 price is $266.30. So the modern price is only $6 more despite the fact that we use corn for a bunch of things we didn't really use it a lot for back then.

Well, the commodity price of an orange in January of 1982 was $315.20 per ton and the price in January of 2012 was $731. According to inflation calculators $315.20 in 1982 is equivalent to $740 today. So oranges have dropped in price by $9 despite the fact that costs have gone up to produce oranges and so has demand.

Aren't you double counting? Costs to produce is already considered in the inflation number. The demand on the other hand is a different story, but supply has also gone up partially because of genetic modification. Oranges survive better, longer, and larger. (or whatever commodity you choose)

I'm just noticing the massive rise in beef prices over the past two years, and remarking that part of the advantages that was trumpeted by genetic engineering was that cost would be able to go down because you would be able to produce more at a cheaper price.

Mind you I'm a fan of genetic engineering and think that people who panic about it are certifiable. Just wished it was producing the economy results it was promising. It is producing an increase in production per acre, it's decreasing the cost to the farmer/corporation, but that last promise, about it becoming cheaper to the consumer hasn't happened.

And of course adjusting for inflation, is a chicken before the egg type of thing. Are prices going up because of inflation, or is inflation happening because prices are going up?

Wow, that would be a pretty good second trigger, because so many products are made with corn syrup. Make the first trigger some sort of cattle virus capable of withstanding higher temperatures. Now imagine if hundreds of gallons of contaminated Coke syrup are the second trigger with an incubation period of a week or so (slower than when you're bitten because the saliva of the zombies is a much more strongly concentrated form). How long does it take the country to figure out that everyone who ate beef produced from a particular facility (got the dormant for of the virus) and drank Coke produced in an entirely different facility (woke it up) became zombies?

It doesn't happen all at the same time but it happens quickly enough and affects enough people that the hospitals and clinic are overloaded. Remember that it starts with a fewer than gets progressively worse, the heart slows but doesn't stop yet, and society reacts as if this is a serious illness. This is where your Superdome scenarios of mass infection start.

I'm just noticing the massive rise in beef prices over the past two years, and remarking that part of the advantages that was trumpeted by genetic engineering was that cost would be able to go down because you would be able to produce more at a cheaper price.

Which then creates a larger demand for your product. America is no longer alone in eating massive amounts of beef. Plus the primary crop we use to feed cows (corn) is now being used for fuel thus making their feed more expensive. Just imagine how expensive beef or corn would be if the demand was the same but the yield was much much lower because it wasn't genetically modified.

Wow, that would be a pretty good second trigger, because so many products are made with corn syrup. Make the first trigger some sort of cattle virus capable of withstanding higher temperatures. Now imagine if hundreds of gallons of contaminated Coke syrup are the second trigger with an incubation period of a week or so (slower than when you're bitten because the saliva of the zombies is a much more strongly concentrated form). How long does it take the country to figure out that everyone who ate beef produced from a particular facility (got the dormant for of the virus) and drank Coke produced in an entirely different facility (woke it up) became zombies?

It usually takes about a month or two to track down an e coli outbreak at the farm or large production level facility. For instance last year there was an e. coli outbreak at the end of the year involving romaine lettuce. The first reported case was on October 10th and the last on November 4th. By the end of November they knew which food item was causing the illness, that it was coming from a grocery store corp X, from distributor Y, and from processing plant Z.

Is it possible that the part of the virus transmitted through the air induces symptoms more rapidly than that portion of the virus gestating in the bloodstream because of the vaccine? I wouldn't think so--how could a virus have two very different components like that?

Well, that more or less describes the Black Death. There are lots of problems with transmission of that one. The buboes described in the literary sources correspond to the bubonic plague, but people with that generally take several days to die, and we have many accounts of people getting sick and dying in 24 or 48 hours, without buboes. Moreover, the bubonic plague is spread via the flea-rat cycle, but Yersina pestis can only spread in the black rat, not the brown or Norwegian rat. The black rat does not live in the northern British isles or Scandinavia, yet those areas were hit by the Black Death. Moreover, in many rural areas you wouldn't have the necessary concentration of both rats and people required to spread the virus (since the plague kills the rat, you need a flea to bite the rat then bite the human within a short enough span, and that requires a threshhold density of both to keep the plague spreading).

So it's generally figured that the Black Death also included a highly virulent version of the pneumonic plague, perhaps accompanied by a version of the septicaemic plague, both of which work in the bloodstream. Pneumonic plague is spread via the air, septicaemic plague affects the bloodstream, both can have different symptoms than the bubonic version. So rats were merely one vector, and perhaps not the most important one after the initial outbreaks.

As far as I can tell nobody was talking about an alternate universe where nobody knows about zombies.

*facepalm*

This is the crucial point that you stubbornly refuse to get: The universe of The Walking Dead IS, like the universe of nearly any other fictional work with zombies in it, a universe where none of the general population knew anything about zombies until one day, the dead just got up and started walking around and biting people.

But just because martial law is declared doesn't mean human beings are incapable of telling the difference between looters and zombies.

You're right: Martial law doesn't have anything to do with it. It's the fact that none of the front-line riot control personnel will have any personal knowledge of or experience with zombies that will be the issue, since their training will tell them to do exactly the wrong thing (don't shoot, grapple and restrain).

Why do you think that every single first encounter with a zombie will result in the instanteous death of all the people that come into contact with the zombie?

Not every single one, just the vast majority. A few people will get lucky and dispatch one without getting infected themselves. And to answer the second part of that question, most people encountering a zombie for the first time will be either killed or infected because they don't know what zombies are and they don't know how to effectively deal with one. They're also going to shy away from the most effective solution (hit/stab/shoot the zombie in the head) because the zombie will appear to them to be a sick or injured or crazy human, and nobody wants to have to explain to the cops about how you just bashed some guy's head in because he walked up and tried to bite you.

Nobody killed a zombie only to have it rise from the dead.

And before Day Zero, nobody ever killed a human and had him rise from the dead, either. If the one can totally change overnight, why can't the other?

Human beings died and then they turned into a zombie. Then at some point people decided to use lethal force against them. They would notice that a shot to the chest appears to have no effect against them. Eventually through either luck or trial and error someone would seriously damage the head of a zombie and that zombie would stop moving. Why do you think people would be so dumb as to not notice this or for some reason think the zombie is just tricking them for days on end?

At some point, people started using lethal force against people. They would notice that other people were vulnerable to things like center-mass gunshots, blunt force trauma to major organs, drowning, electrocution, inhalation of poisonous gases, exsanguination from the severing of a major blood vessel, etc. Eventually, through either luck or trial and error, someone would seriously damage their human opponent and that human opponent would stop moving. So why do you think that when people are fighting things that look like people, they're immediately going to discard everything that they've learned about how to kill stuff through 5,000+ years of human history when they're in the moment?

You breezed past "trial-and-error" pretty blithely there. The first thing that most people would try when faced with a zombie is going to be a non-lethal approach like unarmed hand-to-hand combat or submission grappling, both of which suck when used against zombies. If you're close enough to a zombie to punch or kick it, it's close enough to grab and bite you, and something that can't feel pain and doesn't need to breathe isn't going to give a #### about joint locks or chokes. Maybe one in ten of those people gets away alive and unbitten.

So you are just going to ignore the word "cop" in my sentence?

So in your world, cops just shoot unarmed suspects, rather than trying to subdue and arrest them (which we've already established is only going to get the cop bitten and/or killed)?

This is the crucial point that you stubbornly refuse to get: The universe of The Walking Dead IS, like the universe of nearly any other fictional work with zombies in it, a universe where none of the general population knew anything about zombies until one day, the dead just got up and started walking around and biting people.

And again nobody was talking about an alternate universe. We were talking about what would happen if a zombie outbreak happendd to us.

You're right: Martial law doesn't have anything to do with it. It's the fact that none of the front-line riot control personnel will have any personal knowledge of or experience with zombies that will be the issue, since their training will tell them to do exactly the wrong thing (don't shoot, grapple and restrain).

And of course people are incapable of adapting.

Not every single one, just the vast majority. A few people will get lucky and dispatch one without getting infected themselves. And to answer the second part of that question, most people encountering a zombie for the first time will be either killed or infected because they don't know what zombies are and they don't know how to effectively deal with one. They're also going to shy away from the most effective solution (hit/stab/shoot the zombie in the head) because the zombie will appear to them to be a sick or injured or crazy human, and nobody wants to have to explain to the cops about how you just bashed some guy's head in because he walked up and tried to bite you.

ditto

And before Day Zero, nobody ever killed a human and had him rise from the dead, either. If the one can totally change overnight, why can't the other?

I have no idea what this means. Are you trying to change the rules of zombieism here?

At some point, people started using lethal force against people. They would notice that other people were vulnerable to things like center-mass gunshots, blunt force trauma to major organs, drowning, electrocution, inhalation of poisonous gases, exsanguination from the severing of a major blood vessel, etc. Eventually, through either luck or trial and error, someone would seriously damage their human opponent and that human opponent would stop moving. So why do you think that when people are fighting things that look like people, they're immediately going to discard everything that they've learned about how to kill stuff through 5,000+ years of human history when they're in the moment?

You breezed past "trial-and-error" pretty blithely there. The first thing that most people would try when faced with a zombie is going to be a non-lethal approach like unarmed hand-to-hand combat or submission grappling, both of which suck when used against zombies. If you're close enough to a zombie to punch or kick it, it's close enough to grab and bite you, and something that can't feel pain and doesn't need to breathe isn't going to give a #### about joint locks or chokes. Maybe one in ten of those people gets away alive and unbitten.

Holy Christ!

So in your world, cops just shoot unarmed suspects, rather than trying to subdue and arrest them (which we've already established is only going to get the cop bitten and/or killed)?

Holy Christ again! Is the zombie problem over a handful of zombies or a lot? You keep saying how zombies are going to wipe out humanity yet you stubbornly refuse to believe that people would eventually use lethal force against zombies and they will do so well before the zombie population gets into the billions.

People dying is not inherently implausible. People throughout history have taken notice of death. We tend not to like it.

The implausible part isn't people dying, as you well know. It's people coming back from the dead as murderous automatons, which goes against everything that everyone knows about the nature of life and death.

Unarmed foe who constantly tries to grab you and bite you. It isn't going to take long for anyone on this planet to figure out that it is trying to bite you.

It is, however, going to take quite a lot longer before people understand just how dangerous it is to be bitten, and start taking appropriate precautions. It isn't going to be seen initially seen as significantly more of a problem than a black eye or a sprained knee, when in fact it's a death sentence. Even the knowledge that the bite site has developed an infection won't be a "tell", since the majority of human-on-human bites end up as an infection due to all the filthy stuff we have floating around in our mouths.

Zombies are not deadly raptors. They are mindless bags of flesh.

On Day Zero, nobody knows what they are, which limits the effectiveness of the response.

Unless the zombie populations starts off in the hundreds of millions the initial attacks are going to be few and far between.

OK.

Plenty of people will have experienced a zombie attack and survived.

Nope.

You'll also have a ton of witnesses watching all of this and talking about it.

"Linda, you'll never believe what I saw at work today. It was awful! Some homeless guy on drugs attacked another guy on the street and bit his ear off, and then a cop ran over and beat the homeless guy to death with his nightstick! The cops said I might need to testify at a hearing and everything, because I'm a witness. Can you believe it?"

You'll also well organized intelligence gathering agencies pondering over this stuff.

Yes, I'm sure the NSA is going to trip all over itself jumping on the "dead people coming back to life and attacking the living" bandwagon. That'd be great for your career, to be the analyst who suggested that. The next day, you'd end up guarding a basement file room in Bozeman, Montana, sitting at a desk next to David Duchovny.

You also have a very advanced communication network that can and will get the information out there.

Including at the start (but not limited to) Art Bell, David Icke, and the Weekly World News.

Shots that don't go into the brain are more-or-less wasted.

As stated earlier, no they are not.

And as I stated earlier, you're wrong about that. The real threat from a zombie is its mouth. Anything that doesn't get rid of the mouth (i.e. a hit to the brain, or maybe some kind of massive trauma to the facial area) is going to be pretty worthless at eliminating the threat.

Do you have a fetish for picnicing in a field full of armless legless zombies?

That's a bizarre question to ask.

If you're surrounded by 500 zombies, and you use 1,000 rounds of ammunition to shoot each of them in both knees, your position really hasn't improved at all. They're still going to be crawling towards you, they're still just as capable of biting you as they were before you shot them, and you still can't run away.

Seldom does an army face an enemy that can't be killed by anything other than headshots, or an enemy that can turn its own troops against it with one bite.

What does that have to do with running out of bullets?

The first part means that you're going to waste a hell of a lot of ammunition shooting non-productive areas of the zombie, particularly since trained shooters are taught to aim for center mass, and the second part means that your enemy can reinforce itself in the field effortlessly, while you can't. The second part also means that your security perimeter is immediately compromised if any of the people inside it happen to die of natural causes, and as such, any battle plan you construct needs to reflect the fact that any one of your soldiers could be realistically expected to defect and join the enemy at any moment.

That means it will take a lot longer to track a new, unknown outbreak. Remember also that it's a double vector, which makes it harder to pinpoint.

A double vector also means it is easier to break the chain. Something like a vaccination is going to have a record so if every person they find that is a zombie got a vaccine recently they'll be able to conclude rather rapidly that it plays a role in it. Now then finding what the second trigger is could take time and they won't be able to stop people already vaccinated from turning into a zombie but they will know who is in the pool for turning into a zombie. So they can keep an eye on them, round them up and place them into quarantine areas and such.

Okey-dokey, I get it. You think human beings are dumber than zombies and all of your responses will be along those lines and there isn't anything I can say that is going to move you off from that position. Thank you for being the stone wall that allowed me to think about this for numerous posts.

And again nobody was talking about an alternate universe [like the world of The Walking Dead]. We were talking about what would happen if a zombie outbreak happened to us.

McCoy in 377: "One thing about Zombie outbreaks that I never understand is why (or I should say how) they get out of control?

For example The Walking Dead

As of the current episode of the show (as not to give away any possible spoilers) you become a zombie by being bitten by an already infected zombie. The virus then spreads and eventually you turn into a zombie. Okay, that is fine but there are 7 billion people on this planet and zero zombies at this time. So even if the cause of the outbreak is some sort of weaponized virus the zombies are still going to be an extremely tiny segment of the entire population. And they are mindless bags with teeth going up against advanced civilizations. How in the world does the US military lose to zombies? It is an impossibility. It can't happen. Zombies are not going to over run a column tanks and armored vehicles. The human population can simply not get wiped out as depicted in the Walking Dead."

McCoy in 494: "That is what I am arguing. I'm saying that unless you stack the deck heavily in favor of zombies they are not going to be able to kill and turn enough human beings to keep the zombie species going. Hell, look at practically every movie and everything written about zombies. In all of them the ratio of human to zombie death is usually something like 1 to 20 or higher. How many zombies you think Rick and the group have killed in less than year they have been on the road? How many people have they lost? 10? 15?"

McCoy in 500: "The most useless survivors usually make it because of luck. So they shouldn't have some innate ability to kill zombies above what the typical Joe had at the beginning of the outbreak.

Also in The Walking Dead the population of at least Southeast America is wiped out in about a week. It also appears that zombie infection was basically an infection that basically spread throughout all of America and probably at least all of North America. So on Day X some area of the country became infected and then when people started dying because of accidents and natural causes they turned into zombies. They then turned more people and people kept dying from natural causes to the point that the population of America is basically wiped out in a week or two. The reality is that on day X something like 7,000 Americans would die of natural causes and somehow those 7,000 zombies are supposed to then wipe out the rest of the population in a matter of days or a couple of weeks. Just not buying it."

McCoy in 538: "Not in the world of The Walking Dead, they don't. [Bolded text is McCoy quoting another poster (me), included for clarity.]

We haven't really seen them try. Why wouldn't fire damage the brain? Why wouldn't electricity? A gunshot wound to the legs or torso will and does reduce zombie's mobility on the show.

And of course people are incapable of adapting.

They're capable of adapting - just not as quickly an fluidly as you seem to believe that they are. Particularly given that one mistake means that you're bitten and going to die.

I have no idea what this means. Are you trying to change the rules of zombieism here?

1) Heh. "Change the rules of zombieism." There is no universal rule set for zombieism. That's why a discussion about a real-world zombie outbreak, divorced from the grounds of a particular fictional concept of how zombies work, is pointless. There are too many potential variables.

2) I'm saying that your cops and soldiers aren't going to have any reason to believe that zombies will stay dead just because they look dead right now at this very minute. Those cops and soldiers spent their whole lives knowing that people who look dead right now always stay dead, and then blammo, they woke up one morning and there were corpses coming back to life all over the place. If the universe's rule about dead-things-staying-dead changed in a huge and fundamental way just like that, then what else changed? Who's to say that some other fundamental piece of the world won't be totally different tomorrow? And how can you assume that a different class of dead things are also going to keep staying dead, now that one has demonstrated that it won't?

Is the zombie problem over a handful of zombies or a lot?

First the one, and then the other, as zombies kill more and more humans and convert them into zombies.

You keep saying how zombies are going to wipe out humanity yet you stubbornly refuse to believe that people would eventually use lethal force against zombies and they will do so well before the zombie population gets into the billions.

People will eventually use lethal force against zombies (stretching the "term" lethal to cover something that isn't alive in the first place, of course), but it's going to take a lot longer for them to acquire the ability to do so in an effective and systematic manner than you seem to believe, and by the time that they do so the technical challenge they face will be much more difficult.

You keep talking about boats and jets and artillery pieces, but zombies don't have navies or fly combat missions or march in formation against a shared goal. A tank can't check whether or not there are zombies inside a building. A domestic action against a large number of zombies is going to essentially be door-to-door urban warfare, unless you're willing to sacrifice any and all live humans who might be holed up within the target zone (something you probably can't assess without local boots on the ground) and simply carpet bomb the whole region back to the stone age (probably not a good idea except as a last resort, since that'd also destroy all the stuff you need to rebuild civilization in the area after a hypothetical successful outcome).

So then you start thinking about resupply logistics. Ammunition. Fuel for your vehicles. Drinking water. It's going to be the largest ground operation in history, and not only that, it's never going to end, because even after you've cleared an area it's going to un-clear itself the first time one of the live people you left behind dies for any reason.

No, I don't. I'm just trying to look at this from the realistic perspective of an individual confronting and unknown threat, rather than that of someone who understands the threat in an unrealistically short time because he peeked at the teacher's answer key.

A double vector also means it is easier to break the chain. Something like a vaccination is going to have a record so if every person they find that is a zombie got a vaccine recently they'll be able to conclude rather rapidly that it plays a role in it. Now then finding what the second trigger is could take time and they won't be able to stop people already vaccinated from turning into a zombie but they will know who is in the pool for turning into a zombie. So they can keep an eye on them, round them up and place them into quarantine areas and such.

i'm not sure that's true. people might notice that the flu vaccine is present in the infected, but it'd take a good amount of time to prove causation. and because of the second trigger, there will be people who got the flu shot that wouldn't be turned into zombies, and that'd throw the whole thing off.

i don't know about you, but i don't exactly have the utmost confidence in our society to correctly tease out the cause of the event and the way to prevent it in a timely enough manner to stave off global disaster.

Again, I was using the ZOMBIES of The Walking Dead as the basis for ZOMBIES IN THE REAL WORLD. Nowhere in any the quotes you posted do I say we are all living in an alternate universe.

You tried to argue at times that survivors somehow are these rare 1%ers that possess unique human traits that allow them to go all Rambo on zombies at which point I tried to point out that the survivors barely had any experience with combating zombies since they fled from them and simply fleeing initially does not mean you are somehow Rambo incarnate.

I think even in one of the posts you quoted I talk about The Walking Dead and then say something like "in reality" at which point you decided to get nitpicky.

i'm not sure that's true. people might notice that the flu vaccine is present in the infected, but it'd take a good amount of time to prove causation. and because of the second trigger, there will be people who got the flu shot that wouldn't be turned into zombies, and that'd throw the whole thing off.

If not a single "natural" zombie is flu shot free I think they'll figure that part out pretty quick.

i don't know about you, but i don't exactly have the utmost confidence in our society to correctly tease out the cause of the event and the way to prevent it in a timely enough manner to stave off global disaster.

I haven't put forth that argument. I said that the CDC usually takes about a month or two from the point of initial e coli outbreak to figure out where it is coming from. If every single flu shot is contaminated and 143 million Americans get the flu shot and the second trigger is pretty common then we are screwed regardless of whether or not they figure out where it came from.

The black rat does not live in the northern British isles or Scandinavia, yet those areas were hit by the Black Death. Moreover, in many rural areas you wouldn't have the necessary concentration of both rats and people required to spread the virus (since the plague kills the rat, you need a flea to bite the rat then bite the human within a short enough span, and that requires a threshhold density of both to keep the plague spreading).

I've read that, epidemiologically speaking, the Black Death was a rat pandemic that occasionally spilled over into humans. Due to climate change, Yersina Pestis's flea hosts spread over a much larger range than before, and there were many reports of mass die offs among rats accompanying waves of the plague. Yersina pestis can survive for long periods in the burrows of plague rats, so that the plague would often occur in several waves separated by several years, blossoming when there was a particularly warm and wet summer.

Some of the stranger pathways and atypical reactions (like rapid deaths unaccompanied by buboes) could reflect the transmission of Y. pestice into virgin populations that had no natural resistance yet.

I haven't put forth that argument. I said that the CDC usually takes about a month or two from the point of initial e coli outbreak to figure out where it is coming from. If every single flu shot is contaminated and 143 million Americans get the flu shot and the second trigger is pretty common then we are screwed regardless of whether or not they figure out where it came from.

I got the impression that you were saying that there couldn't ever be a zombie epidemic because human beings are just too smart to be defeated by zombies, and that it would never escalate to a big problem because we'd react quickly enough when the problem was manageable.

If your position is just that we couldn't have a single patient zero (or relatively small group) turn into apocalypse, I think we're in agreement.

My argument was that we couldn't have a The Walking Dead type epidemic but I have repeatedly said that some kind of zombie outbreak that results in blank-ton of zombies all at once would screw humanity. The second part was a new wrinkle in the conversation that was started when we got to talking about how the infection would get delivered to humans.

In WW2 the 8th Air Force had a ratio of 1 down plane per 12,700 rounds fired. The 15th had a ratio of 1/14,200. The Germans had a ratio of 1/12,000. The 8th AF fired over 77 million rounds in WW2. The 15th fired 30 million rounds.

In WW2 it was estimated that 19.7 billion rounds were fired.

During the Vietnam War America was shipping 75,000 to 100,000 tons of ammo to Vietnam a month. It is estimated that we fired about 50,000 rounds per kill.

In 2000 the US Military procured 733 million rounds. In 2005 it jumped to 1,790 million rounds. In 2004 it appears that they were firing 8.3 million rounds per month in combat..

In January of 2011 the GAO reported that we were using 1.8 billion small arm rounds a year in combat and we're at about 250,000 rounds fired per kill.

If I saw a group of people shuffling down the street, my first thought would not be "Hmmm... zombies". If they attacked some people, I probably still wouldn't think that. Now, if they were moving slowly and biting them, I may start to get suspicious.

Let's say, though, that I ended up coming to the conclusion that they were re-animated dead people who moved slowly and bit regular people. At no point would I say, "I saw Night of the Living Dead the other night. That's probably an accurate portrayal of this particular set of circumstances." And I would no way base my behavior on assuming that a movie that I once saw was accurate as to the limitations and/or powers of the undead.

But that also doesn't mean you will ignore the evidence that you see or have been told. If you see a cop shoot one of these things in the chest several times and it keeps coming on and then the cops shoots it in the head you'll probably going to learn something. You aren't going to sit there and say that is impossible because that happens in the movies and then refuse to use that information while zombies gather around you and start eating you.

If I saw a group of people shuffling down the street, my first thought would not be "Hmmm... zombies".

Actually, about two years ago I saw something like that. There was a person outside my apartment building, shuffling along and moaning incoherently. I did not go investigate. A friend I was talking to on the phone suggested it might be someone who just had a stroke. I never found out, however.

With all of the zombie apologetics, I will tell you this: you have a monster-off and the zombies are going to be competing for the spirit award and the sportsmanship trophy.

Now much of this has to do with the fact that many monsters are some variety of undead, hence a zombie bite presumably won't affect them. But that cuts both ways. A zombie can't bite Dracula effectively, and Dracula can't bite a zombie effectively. But can Dracula drive a tank? You betcha. No tanks for the zombies.

Maybe 10,000 non-infecting bites might give Frankenstein's monster some trouble. But Frankie in a suit of armor? Who cares. Plus he can just avoid the population centers for a month or so while his opposition rots away. He's a small town guy anyway.

The aliens from War Of The Worlds? No more humans, no more common cold. No more zombies.

Even The Mummy, the zombie's cousin, cleans up. First, the mummy only fights when someone stumbles into his tomb and invokes the mummy's curse. So it's likely a single zombie, way off course, on the mummy's home field. Plus the mummy is very well preserved by the best specialists of his time, versus some random schmuck with no preparation whatsover.